


Keeping Up Appearances

by AbsoluteNegation



Category: Saiyuki
Genre: Community: yuletide_smut, Complete, Fluff, M/M, Snark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-26
Updated: 2014-07-26
Packaged: 2018-02-10 07:03:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2015580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AbsoluteNegation/pseuds/AbsoluteNegation
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two years after the end of the Journey, Gojyo and Hakkai might just be the two people they know least actively involved in getting the two of them together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Keeping Up Appearances

**Author's Note:**

  * For [opalmatrix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/opalmatrix/gifts).



It was fucking sickening, was what it was. They were fucking sickening.

Sanzo had honestly expected it to take less time. He was disappointed in himself and displeased with them that the possible bumping of their respective uglies had impinged upon his thoughts enough for a tentative timeline of events to set itself up in the back of his traitor brain. He was even more displeased with himself and generally infuriated that this timeline had somehow dared to become concrete enough that their unknowing violation of it had become a Fact. Either way, he had clearly devoted entirely too many thoughts to what his idiot companions were or were not doing with their bits, and he devoutly wished he could stop.

It’d probably be easier to do that if they’d make up their minds one way or another. If it wasn’t all _We’re devoted to each other_  and _It was sort of fate_  and all that shit. If they weren’t sitting in their Own Particular Chairs in their disgustingly homey little place, giving each other cow eyes and all but holding hands and cooing across the sukiyaki. Honestly, if they were going to spend years pining aesthetically after each other, the least they could do was tuck their figurative dicks back in their pants on mahjong nights and at least try not to inconvenience him.

It wasn’t even that he had had a terribly specific timeline. In fact, he had been so generous as to account for multiple points when they could have...commenced doing...whatever they might be inclined to do. He’d kept an eye out for mushiness after they’d taken Houtou apart, and only increased his eagle-eyed observation on the journey home, but no. Not a hint of a resolution or an end to the interminable sexual tension. Towards the end of the way back, he’d even started insisting they share a room (for reasons that were most definitely not that Sanzo had discovered new and interesting reasons to share with Goku. Well, almost definitely not), to equally little effect. By the time they were back at Chang’An, Sanzo had decided to quit interfering even as passively as he had.

And then they’d moved in together, not five miles away from Gojyo’s old pad, a decision that Sanzo had watched play out with the sort of morbid fascination he usually reserved for the interactions of Goku and all-you-can-eat-buffet owners. The amount of denial it took to actually buy a house together and set up like the world’s oldest married couple, and have fucking _matching aprons_ , all without managing to even accidentally-on-purpose achieve actual fucking, impressed even Sanzo, who maintained both high standards of denial and a general professional refusal to be impressed.

It had been two years of this morbid fascination, and at this point, Sanzo’s main reaction to the drawn-out drama was a sort of righteous fury. Not enough to bring up the issue of the Dragons and the Demon-Bees to the idiots, of course, largely because that would betray any interest on Sanzo’s part, and he was traumatised enough by his own involuntary, unintentional and primarily rage-fueled investment in their relationship status without letting them in on it. Rather, he had (in his opinion, correctly) concluded that it was, in fact, those bastards’ fault that he’d somehow acquired even the most passing interest in what anyone else was doing with their lives, and having piqued his interest, the least they could do was satisfy it in a timely and comprehensive fashion. Which, of course, they seemed determined not to do. It was as if they were refusing to fuck expressly in order to spite him.

Well, he’d washed his hands of the whole fucking sickening mess. Which _they_  had made, and was thus in no way or shape _his_  problem to deal with. They could just deal with their own fucking mess. After all, they’d made it themselves.

\------------

It was around the time that Lien proposed the notion of closing for a few minutes on Friday afternoons in order to analyse Cho-san’s grocery bills without interruptions that Wei began to wonder if their collective curiosity was perhaps going a little far.

In their defense, as Lien pointed out, it wouldn’t have been a possibility if he weren’t so utterly punctual.

It had obviously been a matter of some discussion, to say the least, when the Heroes of Togenkyou - or, to be more specific, two of the Heroes of Togenkyou - had settled down in their village. Neither of them had admitted to being part of the Sanzo party, initially, but it was rather difficult to deny it once the Sanzo himself was generally known to drop by for dinner on the weekends. The gossip circles had buzzed for a while about what they might - or might not - have done on that journey, but since Gojyo was quite happy to tell tales while playing poker, that died out quickly, as rumours were wont to do when they encountered the horse’s mouth. Instead, a rather more fascinating set of disagreements had erupted around town as to the romantic state of either or both of them, individually or together. As of the last count - which Bao-Yu was keeping for the family, since she had  the best head for numbers among them - there were at least five girls who had their hearts set on landing Nice Teacher Cho, and easily thrice that number who were eyeing Gojyo speculatively, not to mention four men.

At that point, it really should have all subsided, insofar as village gossip ever did subside, except for the unexpected influx of information from the next town that the two of them had been living there, _together_ , for several years even before they’d gone on the Journey. That had started up the gossipping again, from an entirely different angle this time, and led directly to the current preoccupation with whether the Heroes of Togenkyou were interested in doing It, why they weren’t doing It, and (and this was the part where Wei usually excused himself) how exactly they might do It if It were a thing they got around to doing.

As the only predictable stop for both heroes in the course of the average week, Wei’s little grocery had become a nexus for the gossip, with the consumption of such items as expensive sake (occasionally indulged in), strawberry-flavoured heart-shaped candy (tantalisingly frequent) and condoms (disappointingly irregular and one-sided) intensely scrutinised by all of the staff, and then relayed out into the rest of the village via the little tea parties the older women held over the weekend.  

Since he was related to all five people who worked there, Wei absorbed all of the information. It wasn’t like he wasn’t interested. They were both clearly good boys (“they’re _men_ , thank you; they’re five years older than me”, Bao-Yu had reminded him, with the sniff of derision that she’d perfected by the time they’d put her in school) and had been friendly and nice to everyone - Lien’s back felt ever so much better after Cho had used his qi on it, and Gojyo was quickly acquiring a fine reputation as a handyman - so it was inevitable that they were going to be the subject of conversation until they either settled into respectable babymaking relationships or declared a respectable nonbabymaking one. Besides, they were the closest thing to Men of Mystery the village had had since that one hobo youkai back in ‘83 who’d claimed he could read futures in bird droppings. It was practically their duty to be gossip fodder and pet projects, for Kannon’s sake.

Unfortunately, they seemed unaware of this particular rule of etiquette. Cho turned up every Friday afternoon like clockwork to collect his weekly groceries, to the point where Bao-Yu had taken to putting the predictable non-perishables in a bag for him rather than going to the effort of stocking them on the shelves. However, he determinedly avoided any inquiries into his/their personal life, and thus far, the only concrete information the Shens had acquired from those visits was that Cho drove a mean bargain and Gojyo was the recipient of the strawberry candies, which he’d acquired a taste for. (Sadly, the fact that Gojyo sometimes picked them up for himself negated the possibility of the candy being a lovelorn suitor’s gift.) As far as he could guess, the situation, if there was one, was either in the sort of comfortable stasis that he and Lien had inhabited for a few years before finally settling down, or had devolved from whatever romantic status it might have had. This was, of course, not nearly enough resolution for Gojyo’s Girls, whatever place they had on the spectrum of virtue, but not being one of them, Wei was perfectly content to stick with his passive curiosity.

Of course, sometimes Fate intervened to provide even him with a lovely little nugget of information.

Wei was stacking the latest received loads of canned food and taking inventory in the back room when he heard the little bell on the door chime. He’d installed a little peephole from the back room to the store, just in case Bao-Yu needed a little help on her evening shifts, and a quick look through it revealed Ming. Doing her weekly snack-food-and-condoms run, no doubt. It was nearly three-forty, which meant that Cho would be in any time soon, which...boded ill, or insightful, depending on the situation. On the one hand, Ming had been an acquaintance of Gojyo’s (and infrequently a “friend” of Gojyo’s) for several years now, which meant that the chances of at least a snide remark were fairly high, and if either of them stopped shopping here, it meant a drop in income for the store. On the other hand, this would keep Lien and her friends happy for weeks.

The little bell in backstock rang in their living room, so it only took a minute for Lien to appear, wiping her hands and giving him an inquiring look. _Ming’s in the store, and so is Cho_ , Wei mouthed to her, a technique they’d perfected over the twenty years they’d run the store together as a way to communicate without youkai accidentally eavesdropping. Her eyebrows shot up, and she grinned at him, nudging him out of the way so she could join him at the little window, and they both watched interestedly as the two of them circled in on each other like accidental sharks.  From his vantage point, he couldn’t see much more than the back of Cho’s head, and Ming’s head swaying through the aisle on those ridiculous heels she wore all the time. He could hear just fine, though, as she said “Well, well, if it isn't Miss Hakkai.” Lien gave Wei a delightedly scandalised look, and he had to grin back at her, even while he winced with sympathy. With all that nicknaming, it was inevitable that he was going to hear it at some point. It didn’t quite seem that he had, though, because his “Excuse me?” sounded rather puzzled.

“Haven't seen you in quite a while. How  _are_  you?”

“I'm well, thank you. And you?” Clearly, he hadn’t caught the Miss Hakkai bit. Or he was pretending he hadn’t, at least.

Ming shot back a reply, but even straining to hear, it wasn’t intelligible. Wei gave Lien a questioning look, since her hearing was better, and she mouthed _I’ve been better, sure you know that._  Well. That was fairly snotty as a start. Maybe this would be a fight after all. “For Gojyo, I take it?” Ming continued, presumably gesturing at the candies, considering the place they were at on the shelves.

“Ah. Yes,” Cho said, sounding much less enthusiastic about responding now, remarkable considering the lack of enthusiasm he’d brought to the conversation so far. After a moment, he added “He likes the strawberry ones.”  

Ming huffed a little laugh. “So you don't have to wait to get all the way back to cherry, then.”

The pause was very loud, and Lien’s little happy/horrified noise was even louder in it. Wei shushed her a little.  “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” Cho said, attempting to move past her, voice cold, now.

Ming didn’t move, making it hard for Cho to walk past her, though he did anyway. “Just trying to figure out how much longer your panties are going to be in a bunch.”

Definitely a fight  at this point, and Cho’s pause, and the careful blanking of his expression, indicated that this had just sunk in to him. “Have I said something to offend you?”

“No, you haven't said anything, apparently. Or done anything either.”

Now he was frowning, and Ming was smirking rather unwholesomely. “What are you talking about?” Which just had to be pretense, really. Surely he knew what she was talking about. The whole village had been talking about Gojyo’s dwindled sexual conquests, and the lack of any constancy in those conquests, for months.

Ming dropped the smirk at that, giving him a little glare. “As if it wasn't bad enough already, you have to be a _good_  girl.”

“I'm not any kind of girl, miss Ming. Good day.” Belatedly, and rather less evenly, he added, “Excuse me.”

Ming, on the other hand, was having nothing of the sort. Instead, she leaned on one leg, the sort of gesture that would probably make her bosom jut out even more from  its impressive size. “Obviously. If you were, you'd know that men have needs, wouldn't you?”

Cho stiffened, giving her a rather colder look, the sort of look Wei imagined a whole lot of youkai would have seen right before….well, right before. “And what needs, pray, are being neglected around here?”

“If it was _around here,_  the answer would be 'none'. Around _you_  is the problem.”

Cho nudged past her, carefully, given how high the shelves were piled. “I'm not going to dignify that with an answer.” Hmm, maybe he _was_  aware what the rumours said.

Ming rolled her eyes so hard Wei could have sworn he’d heard it, starting to stalk off. “Yeah, that's usually how you work, isn't it. Do us all a favour, Miss Hakkai…” She paused and turned, fixing him with an impressive glare. “Either get into his bed or out of his house.”  And then she swept off to the till with her little basket, calling loudly for condoms, which always made Bao-Yu blush madly, and even worse right now, since she’d been stuck behind the counter for all of it. Wei had to give it to her - the woman had style.

Cho, on the other hand, hadn’t moved a muscle since her last words. Of course, Wei couldn’t see most of him, but what there was looked rather like he’d been hit by an unfriendly thunderbolt. Lien was making little happy squeaks into her apron, undoubtedly already planning her Saturday tea dialogues, and he had to admit that this was, on the village scale, Big News. Wei nudged her away from the peephole so he could keep Cho in his line of vision, but it didn’t look like he was going anywhere soon. Or maybe he was going to murder her. Wei wasn’t sure, but either way, things looked promising.

Unfortunately, neither of those things happened. Cho took his time shopping, and kept his face carefully below the shelves, which left Wei with no way to observe him.  He bought rather more than he usually did, but his expression at the till was perfectly even, and the entire conversation might as well not have happened. Which, of course, meant that it had in fact happened, and had affected Cho rather more than he’d expected.

Maybe there’d be a good bit of gossip for next week’s Saturday tea as well.

\--------------------

He was gross. Tired, dirty, probably reeking of sweat, if the drying spots on his shirt were any indication. It was a hot day, and he’d been over at Li’s place since morning. Still, he whistled as he trotted up the steps and pulled open the little screen door he’d put up the summer before, grinning at the memory of it.

“Heya, Hakkai,” Gojyo called out as he stepped inside, “I’m home.” The scents hit him before he even made it all the way into the house, mixed and spicy and nothing like anything he could identify, a sure sign that tonight was going to be one of those nights. “Hoo, something smells awesome.”  

“Hello, Gojyo,” Hakkai answered over his shoulder, giving Gojyo one of those patently Hakkai looks, caught between about five different emotions and covering all of them up. “I’m cooking dinner.”

Well, that was certainly the truth, Gojyo figured, casting a glance over the table and the counter, all covered in dishes and bowls of varying sizes.  There were still some pots and things on the stove, too. “Well I’m starving, so that’s...good?” He cast a questioning look at Hakkai, which got him a smile that looked about as sure as Gojyo’s statement had been.

“I made a lot of dinner, so you’ll have as much as you’ll need.” He looked over the food, too. “Or want.” Another little smile that made Gojyo’s heart tighten. “And possibly Goku.”  

Gojyo nodded slowly, his mind ticking over fairly quickly now, and he gave Hakkai a grin. “I forgot to eat lunch, so that’s perfect.”  He gestured back toward the stairs (they had a house with _stairs,_  how about that?) and offered brightly, “I’m just gonna go wash up, if it’s just about ready to go?”

Hakkai turned back to his pots and nodded. “Yes.  You should.  It’ll be ready in five minutes.” He didn’t turn back around, so Gojyo’s return nod went unseen as he turned and headed out. One of the more difficult things about Hakkai, even after all the years Gojyo had spent living with him, was exactly this kind of thing. Sometimes, Hakkai would talk, and sometimes he wouldn’t. There was never any telling until it passed or not, and so Gojyo would wash up, he’d eat, and he’d wait until Hakkai talked, or didn’t.

He didn’t have time for a full-on shower, so he did the best he could with a cloth and some soap. He wouldn’t bother with so much, but it really seemed to please Hakkai when he made a bit of a fuss about tidying up for supper, so Gojyo made a bit of a fuss about tidying up for supper. Once, he probably would have even told himself that it was about making his life easier. Gojyo ran a brush through his hair and put it back in the cabinet (leaving the counter nice and neat), grabbed his shirt from the floor, where he’d dropped it, and stopped by his room to grab a clean one on his way back down the stairs, all tidied up.

Only just finishing tugging the new shirt (with sleeves and everything), Gojyo wandered back into the kitchen with an appreciative sniff, because whatever the reason, Hakkai’s cooking was still fucking awesome.  “Man, I never knew it could be so fucking tiring to poke holes in the ground,” he lamented on his way to the fridge for a beer.  “I feel like I stole Goku’s belly.”

“Oh? I take it you spent the whole day building Mr. Li’s fence, then.”  Hakkai pulled the wok off the flame and deftly transferred the contents to a large bowl. Gojyo’s free hand automatically grabbed the bowl when Hakkai held it out to him, an exchange smoothed by uncounted repetition.

“Yup,” Gojyo answered and took a swig of his beer as he headed to the table. “And that yard?  Is way fucking bigger than it looks.”

Hakkai chuckled softly at that. “I do hope he paid you well.” Hakkai’s smile pulled an answering one from Gojyo, but it was gone again in a second, Hakkai’s eyes and focus back on the food.  “You should sit down and relax. I’m nearly done.” Gojyo did as he was told, settling in with his beer and casting an eye over the entirely too much food piled on the table. Lots of his favourites there.

“I told him to hang onto it until the job’s done. I ain’t hurting for it, and it’s a better word, that way.” Gojyo tried a grin on Hakkai as he reached the table with a huge bowl of rice. “Tougher to cheat, too.”

That managed to get Gojyo a smile, and Hakkai’s voice was oddly indulgent for the sentiment, “You’ve become positively _devious._ ” Both of them took a moment to look over the food again, and Gojyo could only hope that seeing it like this would prod Hakkai into spilling whatever had made him do this. He hadn’t seen it this bad since the early days after they got home, when Hakkai’s cooking had been borderline manic.

“Yeah, well. Amazing what spending a few years with a fucking priest’ll do.” Gojyo looked up at Hakkai after a moment, arching his eyebrows a little. Hakkai would get that, and if he was ready to talk, it would be enough. If not, it was still an invitation. “So...you gonna sit down, or is there more?”

His words seemed to startle Hakkai, who sat immediately. “No, this is all there is. Sorry.” The resigned shift of Hakkai’s expression told Gojyo not to bother giving him shit for that ridiculous and obviously reflexive apology. Instead, he favoured Hakkai with another grin.

“Awesome. There’s dessert though, right?” If it was anyone else, or any other situation, Gojyo wouldn’t dream of saying such a thing (due in large part to Hakkai’s influence), but this was Hakkai, and they had a kind of verbal shorthand. He reached for the rice and started piling his plate as Hakkai nodded and detailed the brownies, ice cream and sweet rolls that awaited Gojyo once he’d managed to put a dent in what was already in front of him. Not that he couldn’t, after the day’s work he’d put in. And all this food meant that the next couple of days of finishing that job would be well-fed, too. “See,” he said, “I knew that whole quest was payment for something.” It didn’t quite get him a blush (difficult, and Gojyo considered every one a win), but the warm little smile was close enough.

“Well, that’s high praise.” The smile faded oddly quickly, though.

“Just as high as it should be,” Gojyo shot back, dishing out more food as he moved on. “So how was your day? Market day, right?” he asked, hoping the casual questions would nudge Hakkai into an actual conversation of some kind.

Hakkai seemed somehow released by that, his shoulders falling a little bit as he answered, “Yes, it was.  I spent the morning gardening, and did the usual grocery run in the afternoon before I started cooking.” Gojyo frowned a little bit as his brain automatically did the math on that timing and came up with something he didn’t like. “Mrs. Shen is going to start getting her preserves from me soon,” Hakkai continued, his voice light. “And I ran into a...friend of yours, while shopping.”

“Oh?” Gojyo said, keeping his response just as light. “Who was that?”

“I believe her name was Ming. The tall brunette with the curly hair?” Hakkai chuckled, and Gojyo ran the forced sound of it through his internal directory of Hakkai laughs. It wasn’t good. “She seemed inexplicably jealous of me.”

Gojyo put the dish in his hands down and gave Hakkai a little smile as he reached for the next thing. “Ming? Why?” Food, because he knew why. At least, he thought so. There wasn’t anything to be jealous _of_ , really, but there kind of was, too. So. He didn’t know what else to do with that, except put a bit too much salad on his plate.

Hakkai smiled very graciously at a plate of dumplings. “Oh, she seemed very concerned that I had too much of an influence on you. Or conversely, not enough.” Gojyo’s throat tightened, and he took a swig of beer to loosen it. This was not as successful as he had hoped.

“Well, I don’t spend a lot of time face down in a puddle of my own drool anymore, so there’s that,” Gojyo joked, but he wasn’t really any better at pretending to be normal than Hakkai was at this point, and they’d been together for far too long not to hear each other failing at pulling it off.

“Well, that _is_  a perk,” Hakkai smiled at a bowl of steamed vegetables, this time, “but she seemed rather more concerned with the contents of your bed than your fridge.”

Gojyo went still for a second at that, and covered with his beer and a low chuckle. “Well, I’ve been away for a while.” He made an effort at his old playboy grin, which had absolutely no effect on Hakkai’s frozen smile. “Must be getting lonely.”

“Yes, I...” Hakkai murmured, and looked down at his plate. “...yes.”

He could feel his bad attempt sliding off his face, shifting from confused and a little uncomfortable to the beginnings of anger as Hakkai’s distress became more evident.  “Yeah,” he offered gamely, trying to keep his voice steady. “How come you’re telling me this?  What did she say?”

Hakkai cleared his throat and didn’t smile at the rice. “Well, she was fairly rude…” That sounded right about as easy as the casual had been, and Gojyo pressed his lips together as he fiddled around with things on his plate.

“The fuck she’s talking to you for, I don’t know.” Obviously, Gojyo was going to have to have himself a talk with at least one of the girls. Pouts and tiny jealousies, fine.  He’d even encouraged that kind of thing before he went away, a balm to his darker moments with himself.  But this was going too far. “She shouldn’t have done that, Hakkai,” he offered quietly. “Sorry.”

Yet there was Hakkai, waving it off just as if it wasn’t a thing, though his bringing it up made a liar of him on that score. “No, don’t,” he said, and pushed a few things around his plate, too. (Good thing it looked good, because eating really didn’t seem to be happening.) “It’s not your fault, or your job to police everyone you know, Gojyo.”

“Wouldn’t be,” Gojyo huffed, “if they weren’t walking all over my fucking yard, you know?” Shaking his head, he dug into his food, stuffing a bunch of vegetables into his mouth while he tried valiantly to ignore the way Hakkai was staring at him. He could feel Hakkai thinking, and okay, that was probably too far over the line, and now things were definitely weird, and maybe if he stopped now, they wouldn’t get weirder. Only, Hakkai being Hakkai, that was a long shot, because Hakkai wasn’t good at leaving things alone, once disturbance had happened.

He kept his attention on his food while Hakkai sat still, then frowned, then actually fidgeted for a moment before he blurted out, “Your yard?”

_Fuck._

Gojyo finished chewing slowly, looking at Hakkai while his lines steadily and unrepentantly erased themselves inside his head. He’d stepped over them, and now Hakkai would know where they’d been. And Hakkai was still waiting for an answer. “Yeah,” he said, still flailing a little bit on the inside. “My life, my business, my-” he cut himself off before he could say something truly stupid, shrugged off the rest and turned back to his food. “She shouldn’t be bugging you.”

In the long silence that followed, Gojyo could feel Hakkai’s gaze on him, his shoulders slowly rising under it, until Hakkai ventured in a low, insistent tone, “Your what, Gojyo?”

He shrugged again, searching for a word that would fit what Hakkai was asking, but the closest he could get was, “...Partner?” The silence was deafening, and he couldn’t not look at Hakkai, equally afraid that Hakkai wouldn’t understand, and that he would.  

After what felt like forever, Hakkai asked, “That’s how you think of me, too?”

Too.

 _Too_.

The word sank into Gojyo’s head, a strange sort of calm radiating out from it, and he honestly wasn’t sure if that was really calm, or if he was freaking out so hard he just couldn’t feel it. He put his stuff down and leaned back in his chair, finally looking directly at Hakkai as he answered, “Well, it ain’t perfect, but...yeah.” He watched, noticing the way Hakkai’s posture shifted, the way his fingers uncurled on the table, and he’d gone and given himself away, now. Hakkai would know, and it would be weird.

Hakkai nodded in the oddly slow moment, and later, Gojyo would find it funny that he also noticed the slip in Hakkai’s wording. “Yeah. It works.”

Okay, then, fuck it. “Yeah.  Long time.”

“Me too,” Hakkai ventured, then upped the ante. “A very long time.”

Hope blossomed in Gojyo’s chest with those words, and he crushed it as quickly and completely as he could. Which wasn’t nearly so quickly or completely as he’d managed before now. He couldn’t go letting himself believe Hakkai meant that the same way Gojyo had meant it, because that could turn out very badly. He’d spent all this time taking what he could get; it wasn’t smart to go getting all greedy now. Gojyo tried for a grin, but it even felt wobbly.  “Really?”  And because his brain obviously hated him, “Like...how long?”

Hakkai swallowed visibly hard, and Gojyo tried not to hope that the look in Hakkai’s eyes meant he was wrestling with the same want and fear that was inside Gojyo. But then Hakkai smiled. It wasn’t any one of the smiles Gojyo had ever seen on him before, small and a little bit fragile, and fuck if it didn’t just destroy every one of Gojyo’s efforts.  “A long time,” Hakkai murmured, and the smile trembled a bit, Gojyo’s throat tightening for it. “Since the day I found you tied up in that basement.”

Since the day Hakkai had brought Gojyo an umbrella. Since the day Hakkai had turned to a part of himself he hated in order to save Gojyo from his own stupidity. Since the day Hakkai was going to leave and didn’t. Well, fuck. Gojyo exhaled a long breath through a throat that felt too small for it.  Hakkai looked really freaked out, and Gojyo had to stop himself from reaching for him, needing to keep the space between them right now. “You know what you’re saying, right?” he asked, holding himself back as well as he could. “‘Cause if you’re not sure...we can pretend this never happened.”

“No,” Hakkai almost snapped, and he grabbed Gojyo’s hand, his gaze steady and certain for the first time since he brought up the conversation with Ming. “It happened.  I’m sure.”

Gojyo automatically curled his hand around the fingers pressed to his palm, holding tightly while his brain caught up. There was the hope again, only this time it seemed he didn’t have to do anything about it.  Hakkai’s gaze never wavered, actually fierce as he waited for Gojyo. Who smiled, small at first, but growing by the second and he was so stunned he couoldn’t really think. “Yeah?” He could feel the smile growing to a grin, but from a distance, a thing he couldn’t stop if he wanted to. Not that he would consider it, with the way Hakkai was looking at him. “Yeah. Okay.” He nodded, finally beginning to feel like this thing was happening. Thinking was still not really on, so he just sat and stared at Hakkai like some kind of manic puppet. “Okay.”

Hakkai nodded, grinning back at Gojyo as he repeated back, “Yeah.” A crease appeared between his brows as he watched Gojyo be unable to stop grinning. “Okay?”  Part of Gojyo’s mind wondered idly, if they’d actually forgotten that other words existed.  Not that he’d care, if they had. Hakkai had said he wanted, like Gojyo wanted, and for all that time, and that meant that he could have, finally. That he didn’t have to pretend anymore.  

Grinning madly, Gojyo released Hakkai’s hand in favour of cupping his cheek as Gojyo lifted himself from his chair and leaned over the table, words of relief murmured against Hakkai’s lips, “I’ve waited so fucking long….” Soft and chaste, it was the best kiss Gojyo had ever had. Hakkai reached up to wrap his arms around Gojyo’s neck, knocking over a bowl in the process, and neither of them even bothered to look. The feel of Hakkai’s embrace and the smile that came after just about overwhelmed him, but Gojyo knew how to grab a good thing with both hands. “Leftovers are good.”

Hakkai nodded as they both stood up. “Yes, they are.”  

Grinning madly, Gojyo scooped Hakkai up in his arms, chuckling at the little squeak of surprise, kissing him again on the way out of the kitchen.

\----------------------

They were being sickening again. _More_  sickening.

It wasn’t bad enough they were stewing him slowly in their little dance-of-pretence; this time, they were actually being actively annoying, sneaking little looks at each other when they thought no one was looking, being all _Could you get that rice for me, please_  and _I know you’d rather have the cobbler_  with that gooey little smile and flirty look, and was it so much to ask to expect to not ever have to expose himself to any knowledge, however incidental, of the appearance of Hakkai’s flirty looks? Not to mention he’d seen that little interaction over at the counter. No one blushed over stir-fry, and Hakkai didn’t blush, period. But there he was, reacting to Gojyo leaning against him (as if Gojyo’s nonexistent sense of personal space was anything Hakkai-exclusive). Fuck, they were being so idiotic that even Goku was goggling at them, a truly impressive feat considering how unobservant the monkey was.

Or maybe they were just all going crazy except him, because when they got to “their” bedroom - the one they usually stole from Gojyo - Goku started sniffing the air, and making little _hmm_  noises. Sanzo was just about to smack him when he headed over to the drawers on the dresser, opening them all, one after the other. “Ha!” He said triumphantly.

“Ha fucking what?”

“I knew it!” Goku grinned at him. “Gojyo doesn’t sleep here anymore. His clothes are gone, look.”

Sanzo could feel his eyebrow beginning to twitch, putting all the little inconsistencies together. Gojyo was clearly perving all over Hakkai all through dinner, which explained the little blushes and smiles. Fuckers. They _had_  been fucking. They’d been fucking all week, probably, since his last visit. Probably fucking all over the house, the unhygienic bastards. They were probably fucking _right now_ , at least partially to spite him. It’d be just like them to shove their relationship up his left nostril at every opportunity.

It was just a bad situation all around, really.


End file.
